A Dublin city councillor says that the energy crisis is making it more difficult \u201cby the day\u201d for ordinary people to get to work, as the price of petrol, tolls, parking and other costs mount up, surging further amidst the ongoing war in Iran.<\/p>\n
Cllr Malachy Steenson said that the cost of living crisis had now made the cost of getting to work \u201castronomical\u201d and that ordinary people were being priced out of living in Dublin, but then facing mounting costs of travelling to work. \u201cIt\u2019s a \u2018lose lose\u2019 situation for working people,\u201d he said. \u201cFamilies are being endlessly squeezed and the government is refusing to scrap the carbon tax which is basically a tax on living.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people are paying hundreds of euro a week between the tolls \u2013 which have gone up \u2013 in addition to the huge rise in the cost of petrol and diesel and other costs. The cost of getting to work is actually becoming prohibitive,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople are telling me they feel they can\u2019t afford to travel to work now, that\u2019s how bad it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Independent councillor, who is a candidate in the upcoming by-election in Dublin Central and a long-time community activist in the area, said that the recent package of measures to deal with the fuel crisis were \u201cnot a serious attempt to help struggling working people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPetrol has doubled in cost as has home-heating oil, yet the government\u2019s much-trumpeted package only offered minimal assistance to people who are seeing costs go through the roof,\u201d the Independent Councillor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were boasting about \u20ac250 million emergency support package but they took in a record \u20ac4.3 Billion in taxes on fuel in 2025 \u2013 and \u20ac1.17 Billion of that was carbon tax. If they want to really help with the cost-of-living they\u2019d scrap the carbon tax which is crucifying ordinary people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn average fill-up for a car has now doubled, and while the Iran war is part of that, over 60% of the price of a litre of diesel is tax,\u201d he said. \u201cThe reduction they offered is largely meaningless. The carbon taxes which are making living so expensive need to go.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cllr Steenson said that cost of living concerns and issues around housing and immigration were coming up persistently at the doors. He also strongly defended his statements in Dublin City Council where he called on the \u201cIrish people to be housed first in Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said his fellow Dublin City Councillors objected \u201cto the radical idea that Irish people should be housed first in Ireland\u201d, asking:\u201dWhy is this controversial? Because they don\u2019t want you to know the social housing stats by citizenship, never mind ethnicity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo non-national in this state should be provided with accomodation ahead of nationals, ahead of those who were born here, ahead of those who have been here for generations, and that is simply the way it should be, and in any normal society that is the way it should be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said that Ireland needed to put a halt to \u201cany more immigration\u201d until the housing issue was sorted out. He said that, currently, the increased demand for housing was mostly being driven by immigration and that this needed to change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Dublin city councillor says that the energy crisis is making it more difficult \u201cby the day\u201d for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,21449,148082,113,61,1629,60,108815,169436],"class_list":{"0":"post-378997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cost-of-living-crisis","10":"tag-dublin-central-by-election","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-immigration","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-malachy-steenson","16":"tag-travel-to-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}